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Clanging off the rim

To Grammar’s House

THIS STORY APPEARED IN

February 23, 2012|By Charles F. Mansbach

New York Knicks point guard Jeremy Lin is a rising star in the NBA, spawning… (Eduardo Munoz /REUTERS )

“To Grammar’s House” is a regular column by the Boston Globe copy desk on the style and language used in the newspaper.

Something called “Linsanity” entered the media’s lexicon this month, a reference to the sudden NBA stardom of Harvard graduate Jeremy Lin.

The term has made its way into The Globe on more than one occasion, but it has still raised the concern of the copy editor, who has long abided by these two precepts:

A.) Do not manufacture words

B.) Beware of getting double duty out of someone’s name

Headline writers sometimes give in to the temptation to make up a word, such as this offering — “Litterally unacceptable” — on a column about litter. And every so often, a story about cows will prompt a headline attempt along the lines of “Moooo-ve over.” But invariably, these efforts feel strained; ours is a bountiful language, and we can make our points more effectively with words that already exist.

Making a pun out of someone’s name usually feels equally tortured. The copy editor concedes that the effort sometimes can pay off, as with this headline shortly after Jane Swift took office as acting governor of Massachusetts in 2001: “Women gain hope as the glass ceiling gets a Swift kick.”

And as recently as this month, the headline “Blunt words for Brown” strove for two levels of meaning on a critical column about Senator Scott Brown’s decision to cosponsor colleague Roy Blunt’s bill to allow employers to restrict health coverage on moral or religious grounds.

But not everyone may have been a fan of other formulations over the years, such as the “Lowe point” headlines that would surface during the eight seasons that Derek Lowe was pitching for the Red Sox.

Another former Red Sox player, slugger Mo Vaughn, inspired this construction in a page one headline in 1998: “A Mo-ment to remember.”

Its appearance led to a spirited back-and-forth on the copy desk, with one purist insisting there was no such word while privately conceding that it was still effective.

The same, perhaps, can be said of “Linsanity.” But its constant use can only force writers to up the ante and strain ever further -- indeed, the Associated Press story that appeared in The Globe on Feb. 18 began with “Can’t Lin ‘em all.” In time, these efforts collapse under the weight of the writer’s groping and the readers’ groans. In the end, vivid and precise traditional language will score the most points.